


Only Women Bleed

by antumbral



Category: Ouran High School Host Club
Genre: Crossdressing, Did Our Duty For Archive And Fandom, Female Empowerment, Gen, Gender Issues, Gender uncertainty, Genderqueer, Genderqueer Character, Questioning character, Women Are Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 18:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antumbral/pseuds/antumbral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benio Amakusa was six years old when she first saw a show by the Takarazuka Revue. That night in her bedroom, she stood before her mirror and pulled her hair back behind her, widened her stance and squared her shoulders, and wished with all her might that she was a boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Women Bleed

Benio Amakusa was six years old when she first saw a show by the Takarazuka Revue. She'd loved the lights, the music, the grand dresses and beautiful hair, but the thing that she remembered most about that show was the men. Takarazuka shows were cast only with girls. Girls played the parts of men as well as women. They looked like men, dressed like men, spoke, danced, and even sang like men: low tenors and mellifluous baritones. After, she'd convinced her mother to wait outside with her by the stage door until the actresses emerged. She'd watched the male lead stride out to her car. The driver bowed and accorded her the respect that only men were allowed.

The sun had long since set when Benio was willing to be dragged away. Her mother called a cab for them both, because it wasn't safe for a woman and a girl to walk alone after dark.

That night in her bedroom, Benio Amakusa stood before her mirror and pulled her hair back behind her, widened her stance and squared her shoulders, and wished with all her might that she was a boy.

***

She threw her first punch the year she turned nine. A group of boys surrounded her on the way home from school.

"Teacher's pet," sneered one.

"You think you can get away with taking first in class away from me?" hissed another, and fisted a hand in her hair. He jerked her head back, straining her neck.

His stomach behind her elbow felt soft, unformed. Just like her own, she thought later in front of her mirror. There was nothing special about boys, nothing that made them more worthy to throw punches or defend themselves. His cheek beneath her fist had been harder, but it was the good kind of hard, the solid kind that said you'd connected with something and caused pain.

The boy had fallen back when she hit him, and she'd stood panting with her fists at her side, waiting to see which of the others would hit her first.

"Stupid girl," one of the faceless crowd had shouted.

"She's not a girl. She's not good enough to be a girl. Girly-boy," yelled another.

"Girly-boy, girly-boy, _boy_."

Boy.

Amakusa smiled at her reflection, as she fingered the bruises along her ribs. Her mother would no doubt scold her, but fighting those boys -- no assumptions between them but fists and dirt and anger -- had been the most exhilaratingly free she'd ever felt.

***

She entered the Lobelia Girls Academy with long hair, huge eyes, and a self-assured smile. An assembly for the whole school was held the first day, and the superintendent welcomed the freshmen and elaborated the goals of the Academy.

"Lobelia girls are poised, intelligent, and well-bred," he said. "We believe here that girls are capable of doing anything they like."

Benio watched his hands move as he spoke, and wondered why a woman wasn't superintendent of the school. Then she remembered that her younger brother was inheriting their father's company, in spite of the fact that her grades were better and she'd always had more facility with money.

"Lobelia girls can do anything," said the male superintendent, and Benio thought traitorously that she'd still rather be a boy, because even if boys couldn't do anything they wanted, they could do important things. Girls weren't supposed to want to be important.

***

At the end of the assembly, a throng of girls pressed together at the back of the auditorium, all trying to exit at once. Benio had no sooner gotten through the doors than a hand behind pushed her, and she stumbled and dropped her books.

"I'm so sorry," said a voice from behind her, and Benio looked up, surprised to find there was a boy at the school. The person before her was tall, almost as tall as she was, and had short black hair chopped into a roguish cut. But the boy wore a Lobelia uniform, with the skirt and yellow bow.

"How dare you," said one of the girls behind them both. "Stupid freshman, to think she'd try and block Lord Shizuki like that!"

"No, it's all right," said the boy in girl's clothes. "It's my fault. I pushed her accidentally. Here," and he offered up one of the books that had fallen.

"Thank you," Benio said, and stepped out of the way to watch as the boy in girl's clothing passed by. A large group of girls followed him.

"Who was that?" Benio asked a second-year student who also stopped to lean against the building.

"Oh, that's Shizuki Asato. She's the President of the White Lily Society this year. They say she's the most talented male-player to come through Lobelia in ten classes. Everyone says they invited her to the Takarazuka school last year, but her parents wouldn't let her go."

Benio stared after Shizuki, watched her wave to other girls in the courtyard. Every gesture screamed 'male'. After all of Benio's fruitless wishes, here was a girl who'd wanted to be a boy and had shaped herself to become one.

***

Becoming a male player for the White Lily Society wasn't easy. In fact, thought Benio as Shizuki demonstrated once more, it was hard.

She was relearning how to walk. Shizuki had taken her out to a mall the day before and sat beside her on a bench. "Look," she'd said. "Watch the boys. Watch how they move, how they don't swing their hips. Watch their hands, how they slouch from the shoulders instead of the spine. If you're going to learn to be a male-player, you've got to learn how to move."

Now they stood in the dance studio, in front of the mirrors. Benio practiced walking back and forth, strides confident, hands loose and careless. She imagined her shoulders were wider than they actually were to help her hold them slouched, imagined that she had to keep space for something delicate between her legs to help her move her hips less.

"Don't think so much," Shizuki said. "It makes you walk like a duck. Just, I don't know, just _saunter_."

And so Benio sauntered back and forth across the room, trying to imagine that her body was male without thinking about it too much. Shizuki sighed.

"That's enough for today. We'll work on it some more tomorrow. When you walk home, try to walk like a boy, and don't forget to do your musical scales to work on lowering your voice tonight."

"Yes. Thank you," Benio said, and Shizuki smiled back at her.

"I know it seems hard," she said, "But you'll get it one day, and then it will feel so natural you'll wonder how you ever walked like a girl in the past."

Benio nodded decisively. As she walked home, she practiced not moving her hips ( _penis, think like you have a penis_ ). She stood beside a boy at a crossing light, and watched him out of the corner of her eye, casually adjusting her posture and position until she mimicked exactly his slouch and the way he held his books. One of the girls who stood beside her gave her a strange look.

***

The night before the annual Nadesico Day performance, Benio stayed late in the first practice room with the lights out. She walked back and forth, watching her dim reflection in the mirrors. Where once a girl had been, the person in the mirrors now walked like a male. She waved at herself, and the person waving back in her reflection had the loose wrists and careless long fingers of a boy. A long lock of hair fell over her shoulder.

She sauntered to her book bag in one corner, and leaned over to extract the pair of scissors that she'd placed there that morning. When she straightened, Shizuki was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame and watching her.

Benio ignored her, and went over to stand directly in front of the mirrors. With one hand, she gathered her hair in a long tail behind her, and with the other raised the scissors and began to cut.

"Here, let me," said Shizuki gently in her deep, man's voice, crossing to stand behind Benio's shoulders and wrapping her hand around the tail of hair. Benio handed over the scissors wordlessly, and Shizuki finished chopping off the long strands to leave an uneven fringe.

Benio stared at her face in the mirror, and it looked like someone she'd never met. A boy with huge eyes regarded her back, and as Shizuki began to trim her hair into a neater shape, she felt her eyes begin to water.

Shizuki noticed, and paused in her cutting to squeeze Benio's shoulder. "I cried too, when I cut mine," she whispered softly, almost reverently.

Benio reached out and touched her reflection. "I never knew how I'd look," she said, and felt the tears spill over onto her cheeks. "It's so --"

"It's okay," said Shizuki. "You get used to it. Eventually."

Benio reached back and touched her hair gingerly, fingering the short strands. "I look like a boy," she said on a sob, and Shizuki beamed at her in the mirror.

"Yeah," she said. "Isn't it cool?"

Benio laughed and cried harder at the same time. "Yeah," she said. "It's kind of what I've always wanted."

***

In her second year, she began wrapping her breasts to flatten her chest. The bandages were uncomfortable at first, and left chafing marks on the tender underside where they tended to bunch up. She got used to it after a few weeks, and the bandages became as much a part of her school uniform as her skirt.

For afterschool clothes, she shopped in men's stores. The salesgirls didn't blink twice when she stepped inside, and she listened to the college boys flirting with the staff as she tried on pants. Men's clothes were convenient, she rarely had to try on more than one size. She'd figured out her waist and height measurements while being fitted for her White Lily costumes, and if she gave them to the salesgirls, usually every pair of pants they brought fit. Benio found it refreshingly no-nonsense.

"Lovely girl like you, we should go out together," she heard a man say to one of the salesgirls. She stepped out of the dressing room and headed back towards a display of shirts to look for a different color.

"I'm sorry," said the girl. "I already have plans."

"I'm sure you can tell them you're tired," said the man, and put his hand on the girl's arm.

"Hey," said Benio, and deepened her voice as much as she could to sound threatening. "She said no. Leave her alone."

"You stay out of it," said the man, but he dropped the girl's arm and turned to focus on Benio instead.

"It doesn't make you look good to force girls into dating you," she said coldly, and took a step towards him. "I think that you should leave."

"And what if I think I shouldn't?"

"Then I'm sure this lovely young lady won't mind calling security to tell them you pulled her arm, and I won't mind telling them that you were bothering her." The man huffed and slammed his hand down on a nearby table, but he turned and left the store.

"Thank you," said the girl, wide-eyed.

"It's okay," said Benio. "My mother always said that girls should be treated like princesses. Especially those as lovely as yourself." The girl blushed. "Here, I think I've decided on what I'm getting. Could you ring these up for me, and I'll go back in there and change?" Benio wanted to give her a chance to compose herself. She knew from experience that the best thing after being frightened was having a few minutes of normality to convince yourself that you were safe again.

The girl nodded eagerly, and Benio handed her a stack of clothes. She changed and paid for her purchases, and as she was leaving the store, she heard the salesgirls whispering behind a rack of ties.

"That's the boy who rescued Kanami."

"He's _cute_! And you say he saved her from a bully?"

"Yeah. He looks so… sensitive. I bet he's already got a girlfriend."

"Either that or he's gay. The smoking hot ones are always gay."

Benio preened a little inwardly and sauntered home with even more swagger than usual.

***

Chizuru entered the practice room while Benio was in the middle of a pirouette run for their upcoming show. Her usually-impeccable hair was untidy and pulled back into a haphazard ponytail. She wasn't wearing makeup, and she was crying.

Benio stepped over to the tape player and paused the music. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"My boyfriend said that he'd been seeing some girl from a public school. He said --" Chizuru sniffed and wiped her nose on her shoulder, "-- he said I got kind of fat."

Benio looked at her calmly. "You might weigh 110 pounds. On your heavy days. And I should know, I have to lift twice you in that darn jazz number."

"I know. I mean, I weigh less than I did last year, because I've been dancing so much. He just said I looked fat. And then I thought that maybe I did."

Benio reached over and pulled her close. It was the position they used to finish one of their romantic scenes -- Chizuru's head tucked beneath her chin, Benio's arms wrapped around her shoulders -- but it worked just as well for comfort. "He's an ass," Benio said softly.

"Yeah. Boys suck," said Chizuru, and Benio nodded sympathetically. In their practice room mirror reflections, a tall slim boy held a crying, somewhat disheveled girl against his chest.

"Want me to beat him up for you?"

"Nah. You couldn't perform if you got hit and he bruised you."

Benio made a noise of acknowledgement in her throat and stroked Chizuru's hair. "Want to go out for ice cream after I finish here? I'll buy. We can get double scoops just to spite him."

Chizuru laughed a watery little laugh. "Sure."

"While you're here, do you want to run the Dandy-boy number?" Benio asked. She'd picked it for a reason. Chizuru played a girl who dumped Benio's foppish man in favor of pursuing her dream of dancing.

"Yeah," said Chizuru, and if she slapped a little harder than necessary when it was time for them to break up in the number, Benio was discreet enough not to make mention.

***

Meeting Fujioka Haruhi was like running into a version of her younger self. Haruhi wore boy's clothes, but knew nothing about how to move or speak like a boy. She didn't drop her voice's pitch, didn't know how to walk, and used her hands with the delicate care of a girl when she lifted her books.

Benio wondered at the intelligence of the Ouran girls, why they didn't notice what seemed so obvious.

The boys that formed the Host Club obviously considered Haruhi to be their own, their possession. It made Benio angry. Even convincing everyone that she was a boy hadn't saved Haruhi. Since the Host Club boys knew she was female, they got proprietary, making decisions for her as though Haruhi wasn't intelligent enough to make them for herself. They wouldn't countenance the idea of her leaving for Lobelia, even though Benio could have trained her into a career as an actress. If she'd passed for this long at Ouran, she might even have a chance at the exclusive Takarazuka school itself, with the proper training. Benio could help her. If she still wanted to be a lawyer, she could do that too from Lobelia, but Lobelia could give her options Ouran couldn't.

They wouldn't give her up, and Haruhi eventually gave in to their clowning.

It saddened Benio to leave her behind. It felt like walking out on her young self, before she'd ever had the chance to meet Shizuki and learn to be a boy convincingly enough to shed her sex and gain freedom from the expectations of femininity. Still, it was Haruhi's decision, and Benio knew well that not all girls were meant to walk the path that she did. It sometimes was lonely, being a boy in a girl's world.

Still, she vowed to return. Perhaps Haruhi could be convinced, rescued. Perhaps she would see the indignities of her sex, the way the boys casually assumed that she was weaker, less capable. Perhaps one day she would tire of being doted on, and wish to truly be treated as equal. When she did, Benio would be there.

That evening, in the practice room, Benio stood in front of the mirrors. In reflection, a boy squared his shoulders and stuffed his hands stiffly in his pockets. She imagined Haruhi there beside her, perhaps as a girl, small and delicate in her arms. Or perhaps as a boy, a younger brother, a protégé. The reflection in the mirror stared back. She reached out, pressed her hand to the glass and watched as the boy did the same. Strange to think that a girls' school could produce this: a boy just on the cusp of manhood, alone in the darkness of a dance studio.

After a moment, she turned away and shouldered her bag. The sun had set twenty minutes or so ago, but it didn't worry her. Girls might have something to worry about if they walked alone at night, but boys never learned that instinctive fear for their bodies' safety. It was spring, the fireflies were just beginning to dance, and Benio sauntered contentedly home.  


**Author's Note:**

> This story goes a little more in-depth about the Takarazuka, for which the Zuka Club is named. The actual Takarazuka is made up of remarkable women, about half of whom convincingly play men. I took the name for the girl Benio idolizes in the story from Shizuki Asato, an actual Takarazuka megastar who has an amazing baritone voice, lower and more pure than many men's voices. Also, this story takes place before Ep 19 of the anime. It only encompasses up to the first time the Zuka Club appears.


End file.
